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These are not ads or paid placements. These Are Some Of Our Favorite Tools And Toys.

Use our links when you buy things

Many merchants pay us a small referral fee when you click our links and purchase from them. On Amazon it works on everything from grills to diapers, they never tell us what you bought, it has zero impact on the price you pay, but has a major impact on our ability to improve this site! If you like AmazingRibs.com, please save this link and use it every time you go to Amazon

Surely you know somebody who loves outdoor cooking who deserves a gift for the holidays, birthday, anniversary, or just for being wonderful. There he is, right in the mirror! Here are our selections of best ideas, all Platinum or Gold Medalists, listed by price.

If you have a Weber Kettle, you need the Slow 'N' Sear

Bring The Heat With Broil King Signet's Dual Tube Burners

The Broil King Signet 320 is a modestly priced, 3-burner gas grill that packs a lot of value and power under the hood. Broil King's proprietary, dual-tube burners get hot fast and are able to achieve high, searing temps that rival most comparatively priced gas grills. The quality cast aluminum housing carries a Limited Lifetime Warranty.

The Good-One Is A Superb Grill And A Superb Smoker All In One

The Good-One Open Range is a charcoal grill with an offset smoke chamber attached. It is dramatically different from a traditional offset smoker. The grill sits low in front and doubles as a firebox for the smoke chamber which is spliced on above and behind so it can work like a horizontal offset smoker only better. By placing the heat source behind and under the smokebox instead of off to the side, Open Range produces even temperature from left to right, something almost impossible to achieve with a standard barrel shaped offset.

Griddle And Deep Fryer All In One

The flat top does the burgers and the fryer does the fries. Use the griddle for bacon, eggs, and home fries. Or pancakes, fajitas, grilled cheese, you name it. Why stink up the house deep frying and spatter all over? Do your fried chicken and calamari outside. Blackstone's Rangetop Combo With Deep Fryer does it all. Plus it has a built in cutting board, garbage bag holder, and paper towel holder. An additional work table on the left side provides plenty of counter space.

The Pit Barrel Cooker May Be Too Easy

The PBC has a rabid cult following for good reason. It is absolutely positively without a doubt the best bargain on a smoker in the world. Period. This baby will cook circles around the cheap offset sideways barrel smokers in the hardware stores because temperature control is so much easier. Best of all, it is only $299 delivered to your door!

The Cool Kettle With The Hinged Hood We Always Wanted

Their NK22CK-C Charcoal Kettle Grill puts a few spins on the familiar kettle design. In fact, the hinged lid with a handle on the front, spins in a rotary motion 180 degrees. It's hard to beat a Weber kettle, but Napoleon holds its own and adds some unique features to make the NK22CK-C a viable alternative.

G&F Suede Welder's Gloves

Heat Resistant Gloves With Extra Long Sleeves Hold The Hot Stuff

If you're using oven mitts at the grill, it's time to trade up. Say hello to these suede welder's gloves. They're heat resistant enough to handle hot grill grates, and flexible enough to handle tongs. The extra long sleeves even let you reach deep into the firebox to move hot logs without getting burned. Our Fave.

GrillGrates Take Gas Grills To The Infrared Zone

GrillGrates(TM) amplify heat, prevent flareups, make flipping foods easier, keep small foods from committing suicide, kill hotspots, are easier to clean, flip over to make a fine griddle, and can be easily removed and moved from one grill to another. You can even throw wood chips, pellets, or sawdust between the rails and deliver a quick burst of smoke to whatever is above. Every gas grill needs them.

Is This Superb Charcoal Grill A Kamado Killer?

The PK-360, with 360 square inches of cooking space, this rust free, cast aluminum charcoal grill is durable and easy to use. Four-way venting means it's easy to set up for two zone cooking with more control than single vent Kamado grills. It is much easier to set up for 2-zone cooking than any round kamado. Beautifully designed and completely portable. Meathead says it is his preferrred grill.

Our Favorite Backyard Smoker

The amazing Karubecue is the most innovative smoker in the world. The quality of meat from this machine is astonishing. At its crux is a patented firebox that burns logs above the cooking chamber and sucks heat and extremely clean blue smoke into the thermostat controlled oven. It is our favorite smoker, period.

Masterbuilt MPS 340/G ThermoTemp XL Propane Smoker

The First Propane Smoker With A Thermostat Makes This Baby Foolproof

Set ThermoTemp's dial from 175° to 350°F and the thermostat inside will adjust the burner just like an indoor kitchen oven. All you need to do is add wood to the tray above the burner to start smokin'.

Professional Steakhouse Knife Set

Our founder, Meathead, wanted the same steak knives used by steakhouses such as Peter Luger, Smith & Wollensky, Morton's, Kobe Club, Palm, and many others. So he located the manufacturer and had them stamp our name on some. They boast pointed, temper-ground, serrated, high-carbon stainless-steel, half-tang blades with excellent cutting edge ability. The beefy hardwood handle provides a comfortable grip secured by three hefty rivets. He has machine washed his more than 100 times. They have never rusted and they stay shiny without polishing. Please note that we do not make, sell, or distribute these knives, they just engrave them with our name.

Finally, A Great Portable Pellet Smoker

Green Mountain's portable Davy Crockett Pellet Smoker is one mean tailgating and picnic machine. But it's also gaining popularity with people who want to add a small, set it and forget it pellet smoker to their backyard arsenal. And with their WiFi capabilities you can control and monitor Davy Crocket from your smart phone or laptop.

AmazingRibs.com Rib Sandwich Recipe: The Ultimate McRib

Like cicadas, the McRib comes and goes, creating major buzz on the way. AdAge writes that McRib "has achieved cult status thanks in part to its scarcity." It has appeared nationwide only a handful of times, although it appears occasionally in individual stores or regions.

A culinary slight of hand mixed with marketing magic and millions of adoring fans, McRib is a skinny pork burger dipped in a tangy sweet Kansas City style BBQ sauce, and hotcakes wish they sold this well. I will leave it to smarter folks than me to analyze the genius of limited edition planned scarcity for such a popular product, called "self-discipline" by one wag, and how the McRib has achieved legendary status in the world of hucksertism. As a cook, I'm more interested in the sandwich, and how I can make something like it, only better.

In other words, it is ground pork shoulder containing no actual expensive rib meat, doctored slightly with sugar (dextrose) and preservatives, and pressed in a 6 x 3" corrugated form to vaguely symbolize a miniature slab of ribs, on one side at least. In other words it is a precooked, frozen hamburger from the animal that gives us ham, and reheated when ordered. In other words, it is leftovers.

Rib Sandwich Recipe

Why wait for the McRib to return when you've got an amazing rib sandwich recipe? Learn more about the fabled McRib sandwich while creating one that takes it over the top. Ribs are smoked to perfection before the meat joins homemade pickles, caramelized onions, and custom BBQ sauce on a buttery brioche bun.

Ingredients

About the ribs. You can use either baby backs or spare ribs or St. Louis Cut. Baby backs are slightly leaner. Make my Last Meal Ribs yourself, or use leftovers from a trip to your favorite ribjoint.

Sauce is optional. I skipped the sauce because the small amount remaining from the original cook is enough for me. No need to hide this meat! But if you must, keep it to no more than 2 tablespoons per sammie. And for real goodness sake, make your own! At a certain age, every adult should have a signature home made barbecue sauce that guests can marvel over. There are numerous regional variations, from the typical tomato and molasses style of Kansas City to the mustardy sauces of South Carolina to the vinegary sauces of North Carolina to the thin tomato soupy sauces of the Texas Hill Country. Click here for your choice of barbecue sauce recipes.

About the pickles. You can buy them, or better still, make them yourself. They're easy, and you don't get any of the preservatives.

About the buns. I like a serious bun like a brioche or pretzel roll, as in the picture at the top of the page.

Method

1) You have a choice. You can chop the onion and serve it raw on the sandwich, or you can cook it. You can just lightly cook it in some butter in a pan or grill it, or you can slowly caramelize it. Caramelizing it makes the onion into a sweet relish that obviates the need for sauce.

2) Slice the rib slab into individual bones, and carefully run a sharp knife along the bones to remove the meat trying not to hack off any cartilage. Then chop the meat into 1/2" chunks. Reheat the meat in a pan with a little barbecue sauce, or, my preference, in the microwave, without sauce.

3) Toast the bun under the broiler to make it crunchy. I think this is an important step.

4) Assemble the sandwich with a heaping scoop of chopped meat and 1 or 2 tablespoons of sauce on top if you must. Then mount the onions and pickles. Serve with Sweet Potato Steak Fries and slaw.

"As much as I love ribs, there's one part that I hate: the ribs. Those bones are taking up precious meat space! That's why I've always loved the McDonald's McRib Sandwich. You see it's shaped like a slab of ribs, but it's just the good parts. And possibly the bad parts - I don't know what's in it, but it's delicious."Stephen Colbert

Based on my monitoring of the Twittersphere, it's all about the sweet sauce. McDonald's could put cardboard on a bun and pour that sauce on it and people, mostly young people, would pay $2.49 for it. Fer cryin' out loud, just get a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's and stick a straw in it folks.

So on the night before repeal of McRib, I decided to bring back a taste of summer and fire up my grill and whup up some nice meaty baby backs, following my recipe for Last Meal Ribs. I made a few extra racks so my guests could take some home and I kept a slab myself. To honor the passing of McRibs, the next day I created the AmazingRibs Sandwich to fill the void.

Meathead Goldwyn

Meathead is the founder and publisher of AmazingRibs.com, and is also known as the site's Hedonism Evangelist and BBQ Whisperer. He is also the author of "Meathead, The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling", a New York Times Best Seller and named one of the "100 Best Cookbooks of All Time" by Southern Living.

Many merchants pay us a small referral fee when you click our links and purchase from them. On Amazon it works on everything from grills to diapers, they never tell us what you bought, and it has zero impact on the price you pay, but has a major impact on our ability to improve this site! And remember, we only recommend products we love. If you like AmazingRibs.com, please save this link and use it every time you go to Amazonhttps://tinyurl.com/amazingribs

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